THE EAST GERMAN WOMEN'S WEIGHTLIFTING TEAM

The growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—is the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States.

Look, it's simple: American 'leadership' (neither sought nor desired) is due solely to her liberalism (agent promotion/mobility). America is a liberal entrepot next to an old growth forrest dense with structural memes and ideas. Now Fareed is a smart cookie, so I'm sure he quotes the number of PhDs per bushel we are producing versus the Rest Of The World (tm). But ultimately, those scientist come to America to make their advances/earn their nobel prizes: and that is great. America (the nation-state) is the current home of liberalism (the idea).

As far as The Big Giant Bridge/Building/Dam...bah! Structuralists are great at building monuments in which to entomb their ideologies; it is what they do best while waiting for entropy to overtake them.

Our key export is innovation; our most prized resource is the mobility within the structure for those agents to innovate. No one else does that, at this time (all they have to do is relax some rule sets here and there. It's easy). We have an agent mobility that no other nation comes close to matching.

Personally I think it's great that the Rest of the World (tm) is approaching a standard we established in the latter half of the twentieth century. Plenty of wealth to go around. But their growth, ultimately, remains imitative, not innovative.

Until the Rest of the World rejects structuralism, I do not fear for America's place in the world; someone (generally a liberal) has to figure out what's next. When the Rest of the World(tm) catches up with us today, we will not be there anymore. That is the curse of liberalism.

So while I do spend sleepless nights worrying about our pig iron and sorghum production, I do not worry about America.